


Angels Under England...with One Demon...and Ser Aymeric de Borel's Cat

by PetrarchanConceit



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Good Omens and Neverwhere Crossover, M/M, with just a hint of Final Fantasy XIV
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 22:34:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28820799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PetrarchanConceit/pseuds/PetrarchanConceit
Summary: After having become convinced that their intercession is part of God’s “Ineffable Plan,” Aziraphale and Crowley, under the instruction of Ser Aymeric de Borel’s cat, meddle in the affairs of London Below. Temple and Arch!  Just who is this Ser Aymeric de Borel and why won’t his cat leave them alone?
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	Angels Under England...with One Demon...and Ser Aymeric de Borel's Cat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gabriphales](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabriphales/gifts).



> Many Happy Birthday Wishes to the Crowley to my daughter’s Aziraphale. Welcome to our crazy family!

Greymaulkin persisted. In the spaces in-between he stalked, hardly real but never _quite_ non-existent, ghosting out onto a trail of mischievous meanderings the likes of which have never been seen and can never be known -- at least not by us. Well, at least not by _most_ of us.

That statue in the British Museum -- you know the one -- the Egyptian Goddess Bastet as a cat, cast in a bronze whose patina has had more than two and a half millennia to settle into its current rich black-green. It’s bigger than you think and more lovely than you can imagine from that picture in your head of the cheap, knock-off rendition you once saw sitting absorbing incense fumes in that shop that sold crystals, tarot cards, and books about the angels who walk unseen among us. Angels! That’s what had brought Greymaulkin here tonight.

You see, the thing about that statue, the one they call the Gayer-Anderson cat (after the man who merely collected what had already been plundered) is that it rarely casts a shadow from where it’s positioned on its museum plinth -- not on the walls around it and certainly not on the floor. But it was casting one on the museum floor tonight, a nice, fat blob of shade that had very little in common with the object to which the shadow ostensibly belonged. It hardly mattered. A shadow was a shadow to those who stalked the _in-between_ , the spaces between those worlds insecure enough to require they be called “real” in order to continue functioning. 

Snap! Greymaulkin slipped in through that spot of opaque shade through which you could not see the shine of the museum floor -- that shade the same colour as his fur -- and paused to wash his face, paused before doing something entirely unexpected for him, for any cat really. Padding around Her pedestal to face the Goddess Bastet, he slowly bowed. Then he cast around quickly, to be certain there was no witness to this rare act of feline obeissance, and slithered out of Room 4 of the British Museum, heading in the direction from which he could hear the Angel thinking.

“Why must you frown so, my dear? It’s a party after all,” said the smallish, slightly rounded man in the sunshine-yellow waist-coat and cream-coloured trousers, matching frock coat removed and held rather jauntily, or so he imagined, over one shoulder. It was hot in the corridor, standing so long amidst a very expensive crowd whose collective faces were reddening at the highly unusual circumstance of their being kept waiting, and Aziraphale was tired of nearly always capitulating to his inborn sense of propriety. They had won, after all! Circumvented the impending Apocalypse! Bested both Heaven and Hell! And he had fallen in love in the process. He wanted to have fun tonight.

“Don’t want a party, want to go home. Be alone. With you,” Crowley grumbled, his usual swagger surprisingly diminished when placed in circumstances he found uncomfortable -- like in a corridor full to brimming with overdressed, entitled, evil-tempered mortals. In these situations, he became quite the unexpected introvert, relying on Aziraphale's natural gregariousness to buffer him from the singularly distasteful requirement that he “mingle.”

“Ah, look now. They’re opening the doors! Finally!” Aziraphale exclaimed with enthusiasm. “What’s with the ears anyway,” he asked, giving Crowley an inquiring backwards glance as he started to shuffle forward, moving in sync with the crowd.

Crowley shrugged. “They won’t bother seeing what they don’t wish to believe,” he muttered, shifting his shoulders so that the long four-strand braid into which his dark red hair was plaited slipped down his back. As usual, while Crowley cared very much about what he thought of his own appearance, he cared very little about what others thought of it -- well, most others, he remembered painfully. Hell and Fury! He hated the feeling that massed through his chest, tightening it before it crept up to burn his throat raw, whenever that bouncing little lamb of a man beside him beamed his affectionate smile upon him. He had dressed for the evening with the very purpose of pleasing Aziraphale, not completely shedding his comfortable and comforting leathers, but shaping them into a frock-coat, waist-coat and trousers that aligned with his precious Angel’s tastes. 

“Very Matrix-Chic,” Aziraphale had said when he saw him emerge, finally, from their bedroom, “but perhaps a few years too early,” the Angel had giggled. Apparently he hadn’t noticed the ears, elongated into dagger-sharp points, and sticking at least four inches out from either side of his head, until now.

“I thought I heard someone mention that you liked them. Demons can have pointed ears, you know. We’re often drawn with them,” he said defensively.

“I do like them, very much,” Aziraphale replied over his shoulder as he proceeded into a central gallery stuffed full of his heavenly brethren. On walls and plinths and even sitting directly on the museum floor, angels were simply everywhere, reminding Aziraphale of what he was and making the skin on the back of Crowley’s neck prickle.

The Angel Aziraphale walked through life on his toes, perpetually in demi-pointe, not because his vanity urged the smallish man to try and appear taller, but because that’s how he felt most comfortable. Perhaps it was some sort of seraphic vestibular response: noting his uncommon love for his earthly abode, his assumed corporeality sought to remind him that an equanimous balance could only be achieved through recollection of from whence it was he came. So his toes pushed him up to the heavens as his heart weighed him down to earth. It accounted for the ever-present bounce in his step at least. 

“Still,” Aziraphale tossed back, teasing, looking away from the angels and back toward his beloved, “with that long neck of yours and how thin you persist in being, the pointed ears make you look like a rather attractive giraffe.” He laughed out loud then, giggling enthusiastically at his own conceit.

Crowley grimaced. “I..” he began, but was interrupted by someone speaking from the podium at the front of the room. 

“Ladies and gentlemen. Honored guests. I’d like to welcome all of you to the British Museum,” said a very beautiful dark-haired woman in a green silk dress. Immediately Crowley tuned her out; he was already bored.

“Hello, puss,” said Aziraphale suddenly, stooping low to retrieve something from the floor. He came back up with a cat. 

It was a black cat. No, Crowley thought, not merely black -- that was the kind of dark you only got from rubbing shadows from the walls as you stalked through them. And while normally Crowley was quite inclined to favor both shadows and shadow-dark cats, he found, when his Angel turned the cat to face him, that this one made him uncomfortable. “What’s the matter with his eyes?” the Demon with the snake-slit pupils inquired.

“They’re pretty, aren’t they?” Aziraphale replied, noting his admiration for the little beast’s remarkable azure-blue eyes. “Unusual though. I can’t say I’ve ever seen a black cat with _blue_ eyes, though, likewise, I can’t say I’ve ever seen a blue of _precisely_ this shade. ‘Tis strange.” Aziraphale moved to cradle the cat against his chest, holding it with both arms, and the cat began to purr loudly. “He says we should go over by the food -- that someone needs our help,” the Angel said.

“Food? You didn’t say this was a catered event. I’m starving,” Crowley returned, lifting his chin to sniff the air and then pulling Aziraphale toward the scent of hors d'oeuvres by the edge of his waist-coat.

“Stop pulling, Crowley. You’ll muss the fabric,” complained the Angel. “I can follow you well enough.”

Crowley was having none of it. He had the strangest sensation, one that emerged from deep in his gut, that something dangerous was afoot. Crowley always trusted his gut. And his gut told him to keep one hand gripped tight upon his Angel for the foreseeable future. 

“Why must you cling so, dearest?” Aziraphale chirped behind him, but with little true censure behind it. 

Crowley just grunted in response. He grunted but he did not let go. When they reached the food, the demon picked up a heavy, white caterer’s plate and stood behind a pair of what he assumed were scruffy-looking journalists. How very grunge he thought sardonically as he noted the girl’s over-sized dark leather jacket and the hodge-podge of tattered lace and velvet she wore underneath it. The man was unremarkable except for the look of what Crowley could only describe as “permanent bewilderment” plastered across his face. 

“Hello,” said the unremarkable man politely, using tongs to place a brie and fennel baguette sandwich on his plate.

“ _The Angelus_ …[t]hat’s it! Richard come on,” the girl said suddenly, pulling at the man’s sleeve to encourage him toward the podium as she peremptorily dumped her food-piled plate on the table and charged forward.

Crowley could see what had caused her excitement when he too turned around and stared at what the large, broad, self-satisfied man at the front of the room had just revealed from behind a curtain. “Islington,” he snarled, disgust in his voice.

“The Angel Islington,” Aziraphale repeated, his tone grim. “Now there’s the bad apple to spoil the bushel,” he continued. His ruminations were disrupted, however, by the sudden appearance of two security guards, one of whom caught the scruffy-haired, unremarkable young man by the elbow. Noticing the girl turn to look toward them, to see what was keeping her companion from following, the Angel knew he must act. He thrust the cat into a surprised Crowley’s arms, grasped at his own throat, and started to aggressively mime that he was choking on the catered offerings. His Demon looked at him for half a second, questioning, and then caught on. The cat merely continued to purr.

“Help!” bleated out the Demon Crowley at the very top of his voice. “Help! He’s choking,” he shrieked, backing hard into the guard still clutching the young man. Startled, the man let go of his captive, and both guards turned toward the seemingly beleaguered Angel.

Aziraphale thrashed about, one hand still on his throat, the other aggressively pounding on his chest as the guards tried to help him, tried to wrangle him into a position in which they could perform first aid.

“Run,” said Crowley, turning to the now-even-more permanently bewildered young man. Still, to his credit, the Demon did not have to tell him twice. He was beside his young companion in a moment. She darted out one hand to clasp him by the wrist and then placed her other on a door adorned with the likeness of an angel.

And then came the Light! 

It lasted seconds, days, a couple of middling eternities, transporting the witnessing mortals into a state of delight beyond both their subsequent comprehension or description. Then the Light ceased and everyone immediately forgot -- everyone, that is, except for the Angel, the Demon, and the aggressively purring cat.

“That was unusual,” said Crowley.

“Yes, it was, my dear,” replied the Angel. “And I cannot help but think that we were guided here tonight with the express purpose that we do something about it,” he continued. “Islington always did have it in for Gabriel…”

“That was his only sole redeeming quality,” replied the Demon.

“Now, now, my love! As much as we have reason to dislike the Archangel Gabriel…”

“He screamed at you, well... at me, really, to just ‘hurry up and die already.’ His face was as purple as his eyes, Aziraphale,” Crowley retorted.

“Still, perhaps our presence, perhaps puss here guiding us to help,” he gestured to the cat still nestled in Crowley’s arms, “is part of the ‘Divine Plan,’” the Angel continued.

“The ineffable one, you mean?” asked the Demon, voice dripping with irony.

“Ineffable, yes, but not without strong hints,” rejoined Aziraphale. “We should help those two young people.”

Crowley merely sighed, smiling fondly at the back of Aziraphale's curly white head as he allowed himself to be pulled by the sleeve of his leather frock-coat, his Angel still bouncing on his toes.

The cat, which he’d forgotten to commit back into Aziraphale's arms, having nowhere else where he was needed at the moment (his boys were between adventures), continued to purr happily against the Demon Crowley’s chest.


End file.
